Through the Sands of Time

A History of the Jewish Community of St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands

Judah M. Cohen

Publication Year: 2012

In 1796, the Jews of St. Thomas founded the first Jewish congregation on this Caribbean island. By 1803, new arrivals from England, France, and the neighboring islands of St. Eustatius and Curacao increased the original number from a handful of congregants to twenty-two families. Their small synagogue was destroyed by fires and rebuilt several times. The congregation numbered sixty-four families by the time the present synagogue was erected in 1833. It is by now the oldest synagogue in continuous use under the American flag. The congregation was also among the first to receive copies of the new West London Reform liturgy when it came out in 1841 and the first in this hemisphere to hold a Jewish confirmation ceremony, two years later. In addition, the St. Thomas Synagogue has produced its own unique religious literature relating to hurricanes!

While the synagogue has served for over 200 years as a central religious and social gathering place, the Jews of St. Thomas have been highly mobile members of a progressive, cosmopolitan society that at times rivaled any in the world. As an accepted part of the larger community, members were accomplished, model citizens in a highly tolerant Danish colonial society. Jews took positions in government, served as auctioneers, participated in the local Masonic lodges, and represented other countries as consuls in St. Thomas. As traders in a mercantile culture, the Jews contributed to the activity of one of the world's busiest harbors and played a crucial role in St. Thomas's nineteenth-century rise to prominence in the northern Caribbean.

Copyright, Series Page

Title Page

Contents

Acknowledgments

Invitation: Why St. Thomas?

A tour group, huffing and puffing after negotiating a steep hill, appears before
the synagogue gate. The visitors’ eyes widen, acclimating to a large stone
edifice with white plaster columns, pointed-arch windows, and...

Introduction: On Writing a Synagogue Narrative

In 1953, the pioneering American Jewish historian Jacob Rader Marcus published
a pamphlet entitled How to Write the History of an American Jewish
Community. Marcus noted in his preface to the work that America’s Jews,
buoyed by their country’s rise to superpower status after World War II, were...

1. Gathering

The island of St. Thomas is a small, mountainous, twenty-eight
square mile land mass located just off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico.
It is the second-largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands in terms of area: about a...

2. Growth: 1796-1831

The end of the eighteenth century produced a great boom
in the St. Thomas economy. Starting in 1792, the spare, small city of Charlotte
Amalie began to fill considerably, and expanded its borders along the...

3. Rebuilding: 1831–1833

After the fire, St. Thomas experienced several weeks of
hardship. Water, depleted from several area cisterns to fight the fire, again
became a precious commodity. With so many houses burnt to the ground,
shelter was rare and came at a premium. The smell of smoke no doubt also...

4. A Battle of Reforms: 1833–1848

The 1830s saw a dramatic divergence of fortune for the
two major industries of the Danish West Indies. Sugar production, once a
thriving and profitable business, became increasingly unfeasible. Although...

5. Development: 1848–1867

On July 2 to 3, 1848, eight thousand slaves converged on
Frederiksted, a tiny but influential port city on the western end of St. Croix.
Having successfully organized a bloodless uprising, the slaves demanded immediate
emancipation from the Danish government. Governor General Peter...

6. The Hebrew Reformed Congregation: 1867-1875

The fourteen men who defected from the St. Thomas
Hebrew Congregation on March 14, 1867, averaged just over thirty-one years
of age.1 Emanuel Correa Osorio was the youngest at age twenty-five, a soon-to-
be store proprietor who was less than a year away from marriage. Jacob...

7. Changing of the Guard: 1875–1914

With its days of booming trade and relentless growth
over, the island of St. Thomas began to lose its gleam as a colonial jewel of
the Danish crown. Throttled by the catastrophes of 1867, threatened by new
shipping and communications technologies, and troubled by labor issues left...

8. Struggle: 1914 –1946

On August 15, 1914, the completed Panama Canal finally
opened its locks to the world. For St. Thomas, this opening ended forty-four
years of anticipation and breath-holding. From Ferdinand de Lesseps’s announcement
to build the canal in 1870, the St. Thomas shipping community...

9. A Revival from America: 1946–1967

In 1946, Pan American World Airways flew its first direct
flights between New York and San Juan, Puerto Rico. The new route, in
the wake of celebratory victories in World War II the previous year, marked...

Epilogue: Sifting through the Sands of Time

In the summer of 1975, my parents decided to go on an
adventure. My father, after years of teaching in the Boston area, wanted to
join the National Forestry Service; but the agency had placed a freeze on hiring,
requiring him to look elsewhere for employment. It was in this spirit that...

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